


the memory of you

by desastrista



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 05:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7832269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desastrista/pseuds/desastrista
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captive Prince Week Day 1 - Memories </p><p>(Spoilers for Kings Rising.) Kallias had kept Erasmus alive. The memory of Erasmus helps keep Kallias alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the memory of you

**Author's Note:**

> I've always been interested in what the Palace is like under Kastor, so part of this was an attempt to write my version of that. Part of it was also the world needs more Erasmus/Kallias.

Kallias had his victory. 

It was such a small victory, in the grand scheme of things. Kastor had captured an empire. But Kallias had saved Erasmus. And for him, that was worth more than a kingdom. 

If only the victory hadn't left a lingering taste of betrayal in his mouth. 

But there was no helping that. Kallias had done what he had needed to do. Erasmus survived, destined for Vere. Now, the Palace in chaos and a kingdom in mourning, it was Kallias’s turn to survive. 

 

****** 

 

Kallias holds on to the memory of Erasmus’s voice. 

He remembers how it sounded the day he told Kallias that the greatest honor that could be bestowed upon a slave was to be unnoticed. It was the natural instinct of people to be loud and demand attention, he had said, in that strange faraway tone he sometimes took on. The art of a slave was to resist this instinct and to become so small and so quiet that one would not be noticed. 

Kallias had heard the words before. He’d heard it from Pylaeus, just as Erasmus had. But he had not believed the words at the time. Hearing Erasmus speak, there was no doubting his sincerity. Erasmus had always believed what the masters told him.

These days, Kastor spent all his time entertaining guests. The lady Jokaste, kyroi, generals, ambassadors, social climbers. Everyone wanted the ears of the new king. 

What everyone wanted to avoid was any other set of ears in the room with them. In the first few days of Kastor’s reign, some of these visitors asked Kallias to be dismissed. Kallias did not want to be dismissed. It was what he had overheard around Kastor that kept him alive. That kept Erasmus alive. So Kallias does his best to blend in. To be unnoticed. He thinks back on his training, but it does not help. 

He thinks about Erasmus, the way he spoke those words, the belief he had in them. 

And the next time, Kallias is not dismissed. You cannot dismiss what you do not notice. 

The greatest honor that could be bestowed upon a slave. 

 

****** 

 

Kallias holds on to the memory of Erasmus’s touch, the softness of his skin when they embraced. 

Kallias does not speak much these days. Of course, Kastor calls on him sometimes to deliver messages, and then Kallias speaks the King's words. But he is sparing with how he talks. The only things that he says are what the King says – or, if pressed, what he knows the King wants to hear. 

There is a Palace guard who whispers about how strange it was that Theomedes got ill so quickly. He disappears the next day. 

A stable boy awes at the fortune of the King, to have gone from second in line to sitting on the throne in so little time. He is dismissed from his service and forced to leave the Castle. 

It is a good time, they say in the Castle, to guard one’s tongue. 

Kallias is familiar with keeping secrets. He knows about keeping a secret so well you cannot even admit it to yourself. It had taken him years in the gardens of Nereus to give a name to the feelings he had for Erasmus. The idea of a slave loving another slave. It was preposterous. It was forbidden. Kallias never breathed a word of it to anyone. They’d have thrown him out of the Palace. They’d have laughed in his face. He wasn’t sure which one he had dreaded more. 

And so he keeps the Palace’s secrets. He keeps Kastor’s secrets. And some place very deep inside of him, where no one will ever find them, he keeps his own. 

 

****** 

 

There is another memory that Kallias holds on to. The time that Adrastus first told him that he would be joining Kastor’s household. He had bowed deeply and said some meaningless praise.

Privately, he had thought it a good match. 

Kastor had never been a Prince, even back then, before he gained power and before it had started to slip out of his hands. Of course, he had all the trappings of a Prince. He had lived in the Palace, that was true. The King had recognized him as a son. But the Palace slaves would never have looked at the plain pin Kallias wore and shook their heads in confusion if Kastor had been a real Prince. 

But of course, Kallias had never been a slave, even back then, when they told him that he would not be serving a King. He had all the trappings of a slave. He stayed at the Palace and wore a collar of gold around his neck. He served Kastor every night and bowed his head at every guest. But if he were a real slave, he knew, he would have practiced his forms at night, as he knew Erasmus had done. He would not, as he did instead, spend the nights thinking about Erasmus. 

And now, tonight, with the Veretian regent staying in Ios and a hostile army assembling in the north, Kastor asks Kallias who is his King. “Why, you are,” he says, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. 

Kastor nods in satisfaction at the answer. Kallias privately thinks there is much Kastor does not understand. 

 

***** 

 

The last time Kallias sees the man who would have been his master, guards are lifting his body from the bloody floor of the baths. Apparently the new King had not wanted any slaves to see the body. He was afraid that it might upset them. Kallias looks at the body and feels nothing. 

He is curiously numb to everything around him. The Palace is in an uproar again. The Prince long thought dead has returned. They say the world is changing and that Akielos will never be the same again. Kallias hears it all but nothing cuts through the haze. He only flinches when the bells start to ring. 

Kallias has survived. He has survived Kastor. 

Erasmus survived because of Kallias. But Kallias knows that he only survived because of Erasmus. He had clung to the memory of Erasmus as a guide and kept himself alive. 

A strange feeling wells up inside his chest. 

Sometimes survival is not enough and memories do not want to sleep. 

When the two Kings are alone, Kallias approaches them. He bows before them and asks if they know anything about an Akielon slave with golden curls who was sent to Vere.


End file.
